Friday, June 13, 2014

LOCAL CONCERT ALERT (LemmaFest), A New Local Band, And More!!

For the fifth time in our last six posts, we have a mostly Sault Michigan-centric assortment for you guys on this Friday morning (actually, 100% from across the river today), including a new preview video, a huge LOCAL CONCERT ALERT for next weekend, and leading things off, a new local band, so here's what you need to know!

We have a new local hard rock band to add to our links on the site, and they are a Sault Michigan quartet named The Bottom Line! Launched on April 7th, their lineup notably features Highest of Fives bandmates Mitch Goetz on vocals and Jack Slater on bass, alongside guitarist Joe Jenkins and drummer Will Storey, neither of which I'm familiar with from recent area bands. Self described as "high voltage rock", the guys will make their live debut next weekend (more on that in a second), but have also indicated that they'll be playing a gig in Hessel in July that we'll plug in an upcoming post, which I'll confirm is part of an annual festival there. No full videos or setlist hints have been posted yet of The Bottom Line, but their Facebook page does share some videos of Will drumming (one linked here), and he definitely is skilled at this instrument! Check out the other drum video below, and stay tuned for much more from The Bottom Line as we hear it!

As for The Bottom Line's first live concert appearance, you can see them on Saturday, June 21st (one week from tomorrow), as they're among the performers at this year's fourth annual LemmaFest, which finally got a formal lineup confirmation from promoters on Wednesday via their Facebook page! 8 individual acts are scheduled for this outdoor festival outside of Dondee Lanes, which is a bit small compared to previous years, and the lack of Scofflaw (who played each of the last 3 years) is surprising, but here's who's advertised! Three LemmaFest veterans are scheduled to return this year, including Munising metal quartet Infathom (featuring Sault-area native Dillion Semasky on vocals), local alternative/grunge trio Plastic (now with Aaron DePalma on drums in place of the departed Paul Burns, source here), and solo country/pop artist Caitlin LeBlanc (who played an unadvertised set in 2012), so all should fit in well this year! The new bands include the aforementioned Bottom Line as well as Division of Sanity, a young local rock band whose online music output is largely acoustic, but have indicated that they play metal songs also, so it will be interesting to see how they sound at LemmaFest!

The other 3 acts are somewhat more mysterious as of right now, and they include a solo artist named Mike Kowalski (genre and instruments unclear) and bands named Nightmare Grin and Mr. Fister, who currently lack online pages and a high amount of concrete info. I do know that Nightmare Grin's drummer is I.S.O.M. alum Bart Rennels (nice to see him in a new band!), and I've heard scattered rumours relating to both bands, but full lineups and genres are hopefully forthcoming in a public form, though as we've seen with bands like Great Bodily Harm and Power Slug, online pages aren't a guarantee. Time slots for this year's LemmaFest have yet to be announced, but the poster above looks realistic to the order, for what that's worth. In memory of the late Mike Lemma and Jon Hackworth (who sadly passed away in January), admission for this ALL AGES event will be $10, with the day's events beginning at 12:00 PM, and there will be prizes & draws, a pig roast, bowling specials, and more, with proceeds going to the Hackworth family.

For more details, visit the above links and the Facebook event page! This should be a great event, and even though the lineup is surprising due to the number of newer projects and lack of some familiar recent bands, they're all rocking out for a great cause, and hopefully Mike & Jon are looking on somewhere and enjoying this year's festival! Stay tuned for updates (particularly on Nightmare Grin & Mr. Fister), and don't miss LemmaFest IV next weekend!

Finally for today, we have one last note with a Bottom Line connection, as Mitch & Jack's other hard rock band The Highest of Fives released a new trailer for the second chapter of their ongoing short film "Bang!" to their YouTube channel yesterday! The first chunk of the trailer features a slow motion chase scene, and it ends with assorted out of context scenes from upcoming installments, plus a very brief audio clip at the end. It doesn't tell us much, but it does give a tease of what we'll see in part 2, so give the trailer a look below!

That's all for today, but stay tuned for That;s all for today, but stay tuned for special features on a recent glut of video posts (also from the Sault Michigan area) in the coming days! Thanks everyone!